The slow burning fuse: the lost history of the British anarchists - John Quail. Britain’s history of torture in Northern Ireland. Demolished beyond repair: the reputation of the preposterous and demented Tony Blair. Blair's latest speech was so bizarre in its assertions, says Patrick Cockburn, that it should forever rule him out as a serious commentator on the Middle East.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of the core group of al-Qa'ida, may well chortle in disbelief if he reads a translation of Tony Blair's latest speech on the Middle East delivered last week. If Blair's thoughts are used as a guide to action, then the main beneficiaries will be al-Qa'ida-type jihadist movements. Look out, local education authorities. Your time is up. And so, it may finally come to pass.
The effective abolition of all local authority functions in education seems to set to come about if Labour are in power after 2015. And in a further dose of irony, the death knell will come via a report written by a man previously famous for leading the People's Republic of South Yorkshire. This, in truth, is the inescapable logic of much of what David Blunkett (previously education secretary under Tony Blair and a former leader of Sheffield city council) has written today for Labour. The report is the latest, and in some ways the most important, attempt to grapple with the technical-sounding question of a middle tier in education – in other words, who takes charge of the various education functions that sit outside of schools. Central control won't work Academies here to stay under Labour First, the good. Six Facts - Waldorf Watch. Whatever is right or wrong about Waldorf schools, the source lies in Rudolf Steiner's occultism.
Steiner acknowledged that we live in the physical universe, and he admitted (sometimes) that science describes this universe with some precision. But he also claimed that we simultaneously live in other universes, which are more real. Help to Work is a costly way of punishing the jobless. The TUC says 540,000 of the jobs created since 2010 are self-employed positions.
Photograph: Oli Scarff/Getty Images Expect triumphant headlines for the latest employment figureson Wednesday. More people will be in work, which is good news: far better to have half a job than no job at all. ThisWeek: Owen Jones on union power (13Mar14) Kettling and the Rule of Law. Lord Justice Bingham once described the Rule of Law as ‘the cornerstone of a democratic society.’
Although on the face of it this constitutional principle might be associated with the idea that law and order reign, the doctrine’s deeper implications concern how power is exercised in a modern constitutional regime. More specifically, a state that claims to uphold the Rule of Law is a state in which government and its administration (that is, those who claim to legitimately exercise power — including a monopoly on violence) operate according to the law.
This is what distinguishes a police force from a gang, or the executive of a government from a Mafia. Although it may (quite rightly) be argued that the Rule of Law serves to mystify and sustain power relations, it also provides a means of holding power to account and illuminates a disturbing trend in recent events.
Raymond Antrobus on Michael Gove and the power of spoken word poetry. We disconnected creativity and art.
But if it ain’t no creativity ain’t no art and if ain’t no art then even the schools must close – Amiri Baraka Young people have so much to say, how can they not write? – Nick Makoha The role of the poet is to celebrate, to mourn, to explore and speculate, to look at life and say “isn’t this weird, horrendous, funny, strange, amazing?” This is synonymous with a good teacher. As a poet (who is alive) it’s hard not to take offence at the fact that Michael Gove is removing all contemporary poetry from the reformed GCSE curriculum launching in 2015.
For example, how do you engage so-called “low ability” or “disenfranchised” students with classical (exclusively male) texts, particularly in multi-cultural schools? We ought to start with taking an interest in their lives and culture, giving students ownership over their language and letting them explore the possibilities for themselves with creative writing facilitation. It was difficult for me to understand. The coalition is slowly terminating the social contract. We need to talk about our rights as members of the public rather than letting corporations define them, writes Matt Hawkins What did Aristotle, Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Paine, and Tony Benn all have in common?
Queue the worst punchline ever: they all believed that government was bound by a ‘social contract’ to act for and in the interests of its citizens (you were warned).